


The question of the war-wound

by sootonthecarpet



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Essays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:45:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sootonthecarpet/pseuds/sootonthecarpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An essay I wrote last summer. My theory about Watson's war injury.</p><p> </p><p>If I shouldn't put my Holmes essays up here, let me know and I'll take this down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The question of the war-wound

Arguments over the placement and number of Watson’s war injuries are a very common occurrence—indeed, so common they might be called a cliché. Among this collection of theories, the ideas range from the commonplace to the bizarre. It has often been posited that he was simply shot twice, and some hold that he was shot once in a third location altogether (generally, one he would have considered it impolite to mention), and it has even been suggested that the bullet that struck Watson’s shoulder bounced off the scapula and actually travelled beneath his skin to embed itself in his calf.

However, all these theories are wrong.

If one carefully examines the source material, one conclusion alone can be reached in perfect certainty, with neither an overabundance of imagination nor cumbersome incuriousness. 

“I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery,” Watson states in STUD. What possibly could have changed in the three years between the publication of _A Study in Scarlet_ and the publication of _The Sign of the Four_ , that he should speak of a wounded _leg_ , stating “I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather,” in clear contradiction of his previous statement? 

The answer may well lie not with the stated facts about the injury, but with the conspicuous absence of them. Within SIGN, only vague allusions are made to the injury, and Watson seems quite unhindered by it despite the suggestion, stated above, that it currently pains him. One would certainly expect his leg to be giving him trouble after such a lengthy walk, but the only toll the trudge appears to be taking on him is one of ordinary tiredness, as he finds himself “Limp and weary, befogged in mind and fatigued in body,” but he makes no mention of pain. Indeed, despite his somewhat later statement that the bullet remains embedded in him (“The Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence…”), he is on several occasions shown to run quite easily and quite well, most notably in HOUN (“I am reckoned fleet of foot,”) and CHAS, where Holmes and Watson “had run two miles,” fleeing the house of the blackmailer. 

Shortly after Watson’s statement in SIGN as to his wounded leg, Holmes presents an almost unfairly harsh criticism of his friend’s already popular writing in _A Study in Scarlet_ , saying, “Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.” Might this actually point, not to the romantic aspects of STUD, but to Holmes’s view on Watson’s injury?

Watson claims to have been injured in the leg, but he does not go into the specifics of the injury, nor does it appear to hinder him at those moments where such hindrance would be least appreciated, but only at utterly sedentary moments within the confines of his home. In STUD, however, he _does_ give some details of his injury, and does not seem to think it much of a hardship to do so. 

Sherlock Holmes is a very precise, controlling man of the sort who likes to think of everything before it happens. It has apparently been demonstrated to him already that clients come to him due to their experience with reading Watson’s sole publication, so surely it would occur to him that his friend might have readers among the criminal classes. Holmes knows that they may well come across violence in their line of work, and he cannot abide the thought of preventable harm coming to Watson (see DEVI and 3GAR). As he glances through _A Study in Scarlet_ , he notes that Watson has revealed an obvious physiological weak point in referring to his injury, and that were they involved in a physical altercation with someone who had read of Watson’s injury, the logical thing for that person to do would be to exploit it. He brings up the matter, very displeased with Watson for admitting the injury. Watson is an honest man, and would have seen no reason to lie about his injury, so he is of course rather stung by Holmes’s words. Holmes eventually convinces Watson to fabricate another injury in a different location, and to portray it as a pretty serious weakness. If two people are fighting and one believes the other to be at a disadvantage, the one presumed to be flawed actually has the upper hand. Holmes knows this and wishes Watson to exploit it to the fullest. Watson, however, does not wish to rework entire events, and therefore admits to running when the admittance becomes necessary. This displeases Holmes, and, along with the in-his-eyes-unfortunate romanticizing of what should remain scientific analyses, he continues to have a lot to complain about. However, Watson is strong in his opinions and even a bit temperamental, and stands firm on not altering events further to fabricate his injury or changing his writing style drastically to suit Holmes’s whims.

And still there remains the matter of the shoulder injury in STUD.

All of this conflicting information leads to a very strange assortment of material, and it becomes nearly impossible, at first glance, to determine what is fiction and what is truth. A lot of thought has to go into any theory, no matter how accurate it turns out to be. Watson’s comments about his injury have confused people for generations, and no one theory, no matter how demonstrable, is ever going to truly put an end to the discussion.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to play the Game a bit. I don't genuinely think this theory is the one true theory. There is no one true theory. We're all in this for fun, ain't we?


End file.
